This Is The Only Acceptable Form of Anger | Impulse Control

“There is an expression popular amongst basketball coaches. A coach doesn’t “get” a technical foul, they take one. If you’ve ever watched Gregg Popovich coach, you’ve seen it. When his team isn’t playing with enough passion, when the refs are getting complacent, when the crowd needs to be fired up, or when he’s just plain tired of watching his team not do what they’re supposed to be, he’ll pick a call to get angry about and take a technical foul. Sometimes he’ll even say to his assistant coach right beforehand, “You’re going to have to coach the rest of this game,” and then he’ll keep yelling until he gets a second technical and has to head back into the locker room.”Ryan discusses the practical use of an otherwise destructive emotion, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is brought to you by Policygenius. Policygenius helps you compare top insurers in one place, and it lets you save 50% or more on life insurance. Policygenius will help you find the insurance coverage you need. You can save 50% or more by comparing quotes. And when your life insurance policy is sorted out, you’ll know that your family will be protected if anything happens. Just go to policygenius.com to get started. Policygenius: when it comes to insurance, it’s nice to get it right.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:34Ryan Holiday?

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• 1:18Ryan Holiday?

  and there's zero hassle, since they work for you, not the insurance companies. You can save 50% or more by comparing quotes. And when your life insurance policy is sorted out, you'll know your family is protected. Just go to PolicyGenius.com to get started. PolicyGenius, when it comes to insurance, it's nice to get it right.

• 1:37Ryan Holiday?

  This is the only acceptable form of anger. There's an expression popular amongst basketball coaches. A coach doesn't get a technical foul, they take one. If you've ever watched Greg Popovich coach, you've seen it. When his team isn't playing with enough passion, when the refs are getting complacent, when the crowd needs to be fired up, or when he's just playing tired of watching his team not do what they're supposed to do, he'll pick a call to get angry about and then take a technical foul. Sometimes he'll even say to his assistant- Coach right beforehand, you're going to have to coach the rest of the game. And then he'll keep yelling until he gets a second technical and has to head back into the locker room.

• 2:19Ryan Holiday?

  The crazy thing is that this calculated explosion of anger often has the desired effect. The team wakes up, the refs start paying attention, the fans get drawn into the game. Needless to say, it is a difficult balancing act and fundamentally different than the kinds of technicals most players and coaches get, where their temper costs their team points with no upside. The Stoics who spoke often of the perils of anger warned against that kind of passion, the one you can't control, the one that bursts out at inopportune times, the one that's all about you. But this intentional, direct anger done for effect, would they be okay with it? Maybe. Surely Marcus Aurelius as emperor had to yell at some folks.

• 3:03Ryan Holiday?

  Sometimes that's the only way to get through people's defenses, to wake them up, to establish authority needed for a position like his to continue. An emperor who never gets upset, who shrugs everything off, is not the one that people respect for long. In fact, to be so nonchalant might cost millions of lives. Still, there is a big difference between anger to make a point and the anger of Hadrian, who once got so mad at a secretary that he stabbed them in the eye in a fury. We also know of a quote from the early Stoic philosopher Diogenes, who while giving a speech about anger no less, was heckled and spit on by a person in the crowd. "I'm not angry," Diogenes replied with a smile, "but I'm not sure whether I should be."

• 3:46Ryan Holiday?

  And there you have it, admission of the very idea we're talking about, that sometimes anger can be used for effect, that as long as we have it under control, there is a big difference between appearing angry and actually losing your temper. Anger then is generally to be avoided, to be contained, but once you have it contained, perhaps like fire, it can be used as a tool, but only when the proper training has been done beforehand.

• 4:16Ryan Holiday?

  If something is making you upset, write it down and look at it. What happened? Who caused it? Now, think about your reaction. What did you say? What did you feel? Did this make it better or worse? Marcus Aurelius's emperor clearly had many people and causes to be upset. He also had real power and authority. Even so, we find that he would tell himself, "You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." So too with what has happened to you. You did not control what happened, but you do control which impulses you will follow in the wake of it. And this is this week's meditation in the Daily Stoic Journal,

• 5:00Ryan Holiday?

  titled "Impulse Control." I do hope you check out the journal. It's a little journal I do every morning. We have three quotes here to go along with it. Epictetus says, "We must discover the missing art of assent and pay special attention to the sphere of our impulses, that they are subject to reservations, to the common good, and that they are in proportion to actual worth." It's Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, 1137. I just love that you have Marcus Aurelius quoting Epictetus. "You say good fortune used to meet you at every corner, but the fortunate person is the one who gives themselves a good fortune. And good fortunes are a well-tuned soul, good impulses, and good actions." That's Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, 536.

• 5:45Ryan Holiday?

  Frame your thoughts like this. "You're an old person. You won't let yourself be enslaved by this any longer, no longer pulled like a puppet by every impulse, and you'll stop complaining about your present fortune or dreading the future." To me, journaling is just such a great way to do this exercise of impulse control.

• 6:08Ryan Holiday?

  I usually do it in the morning, but you could do journaling at any time. But I think, what are you upset about? Why are you angry? What are you holding on to? What's that thing inside you that you really want to say to that person? Say it on the page first. Anne Frank talks about how paper is more patient than people. Sometimes I find that the thing that I was writing down, I hadn't quite worked it out yet. And if I had said it the way I was thinking on the paper, it would not go well. Or I find that having said it once, I'm done. I don't need to mention this to anyone. It's probably better that I keep it to myself. So to me, journaling is really a way to work out some of those urges.

• 6:52Ryan Holiday?

  Just because you say something doesn't mean, just because you think something doesn't mean you need to say it. I'm always amazed at these athletes who, you know, after a loss rush into the locker room and tweet something. As if, dude, you're not going to be in a small metal tube with the person you just talked shit about for the next eight hours? As if you don't have to show up to work with them every single day? You need to develop this emotional impulse control. But that doesn't mean you just stuff it down and you don't deal with it. You've got to deal with it on the pages in the journal. That's the idea. You let it out. It's a place to do some spiritual combat, but it's also a place for your ideas, your competing impulses, your competing opinions to battle themselves out, to fight for that limited space.

• 7:37Ryan Holiday?

  So spend some time with your journal as therapy. That's what it's there for. And if you're not taking advantage of it, chances are you are just taking those feelings out on other people or you're taking them out on yourself. And that's not a good way to go through life. So use the journal as an instrument of impulse control. It's gotten me out of trouble time and time again. I can think of a moment. When one of my books was coming out and I got sort of royally screwed over by a journalist, I wouldn't even say screwed over anymore. Let's just say someone did something to me that was quite unethical and quite petty and annoying. And actually, the prompts in the Daily Stoic Journal, it caught me day after day. It was like three prompts in a row.

• 8:20Ryan Holiday?

  I didn't rush into saying something, I was gonna wait a few days. And at the end of the three days, at the end of the journaling, kept it to myself. And even now, I don't need to tell you the specifics, I've moved on. And it saved me some headache, probably saved me creating an enemy for no reason. And then I can move on. And I hope you can do the same. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. You just go to dailystoic.com/email. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.